Institute for Biblical & Scientific Studies

News:
April 11, 2005

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Religion in the News

Thinking
Straighter
Why the world's most famous atheist now believes in God. By James A. Beverley.

Muslims insist
on polygamy
Thousands of Muslims marched through Kampala city yesterday and declared
a jihad (holy war) against the Domestic Relations Bill (DRB) 2003, which
is yet to be enacted into law (New Vision, Uganda)

Rethinking
the use of Muslim law
The imposition of corporal punishment, stoning, and execution in the name
of religious texts on an entire society is unacceptable. We must all condemn
such repressive practices carried out without due legal process (Tariq Ramadan,
The Boston Globe)

Israel
court expands conversion definition
Israel's Supreme Court agreed Thursday to recognize non-Orthodox conversions
to Judaism partially performed in Israel, delivering a blow to the Orthodox
monopoly over religious affairs in the country (Associated Press)

Expert
questions artifacts' credentials
Educator discusses how forgers feed on faith "The Question of Forged
Inscriptions of Antiquity: From the James Ossuary to the Marzeah Papyrus."
(Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.)

Swift Mission Nabs
Its First Distance Measurement To Star Explosion University Park PA
(SPX) Apr 06, 2005
The NASA-led Swift mission has measured the distance to two gamma-ray bursts
- back to back, from opposite parts of the sky - and both were from over
nine billion light years away, unleashed billions of years before the Sun
and Earth formed.

Concentrated
Dark Matter At The Cores Of Fossil Galaxies Birmingham, UK (SPX) Apr
06, 2005
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have used the new generation
of X-ray space observatories to study "fossil galaxies" - ancient
galaxy groups in which all of the large galaxies have gradually merged to
form one central giant galaxy.

Solving
The Mystery Of Solar Flares London, UK (SPX) Apr 06, 2005
An international group of scientists led by the Mullard Space Science Laboratory
(MSSL), University College London, has discovered important new evidence
that points to the cataclysmic events that trigger a solar flare and the
mechanisms that drive its subsequent evolution.

Case Of Sedna's
Missing Moon Solved Cambridge MA (SPX) Apr 06, 2005
When the distant planetoid Sedna was discovered on the outer edges of our
solar system, it posed a puzzle to scientists. Sedna appeared to be
spinning very slowly compared to most solar system objects, completing one
rotation every 20 days.

Moon Fountains
Huntsville AL (SPX) Mar 31, 2005
It's astonishing how prophetic some science fiction has been. Back in 1956,
two years before NASA was even created, Hal Clement published a short Sci-Fi
story called "Dust Rag", about two astronauts descending into
a crater on the Moon to investigate a mysterious haze dimming stars near
the lunar horizon.

First "Private"
Lunar Mission Succeeded Despite NASA Roadblocks
Tucson AZ (SPX) Apr 04, 2005 - "Lunar Prospector Against All Odds,"
by Alan Binder, Ph.D., is the highly personal and engaging story of how
the Lunar Prospector orbital mapping mission was developed and carried out
by the author between late 1989 and 2001.

Lego Biology
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Apr 07, 2005
Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at the Ames Research Center, has long
been investigating the coldest and driest places on Earth. These harsh environments
- and the ability of life to adapt there - could point the way to finding
life on Mars.

Biology

The
Alternative Genome
Contrary to the old "one gene, one protein" axiom, complex organisms
coax more flexibility from their DNA by having small numbers of genes do
the work of many.

Zinc
Hones Teens' Thinking Skills
Zinc may give your teenager a mental edge. Researchers found that adding
the mineral to the diets of middle schoolers led to improvements in their
memories and attention spans.

Fish
Diversity Tied to Evolution of Diving Ability
From clownfish to catfish, grouper to great white, the diversity of fish
in the sea is nothing short of astonishing. Now scientists have managed
to account for this wide assortment, at least in part, by tracing the evolution
of the organ that allows the creatures to swim at different depths.

Teaching
Darwin splits Pennsylvania town
The pastoral fields and white frame houses appear at peace, but this Pennsylvania
farm town is deeply at war over teaching Darwin or Christian creationism
in its schools (AFP)

Intelligent
Design, unintelligent me
For me and many other students, biology as it is usually taught, one complicated
fact or term after another, is deadly dull. Introducing a little debate
would excite teenagers, just as the attacks on conventional wisdom launched
by my favorite high school history teacher, Al Ladendorff, always got me
walking fast to that class so I wouldn't miss anything (Jay Mathews, The
Washington Post)

Would
you Adam and Eve it?
A teachers' union has said it is alarmed by an increase in lessons which
teach that Adam and Eve was the literal truth, rather the fable which science
believes it to be. The rise in creationism is not just an American phenomenon
(BBC)

Creation
conflict in schools
How some biology teachers are handling the hot button debate over the theory
of evolution, creationism and intelligent design (NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,
PBS)

Earth Science

Probing
the Geodynamo
Studies of our planet's churning interior offer intriguing clues to why
the earth's magnetic field occasionally flips and when the next reversal
may begin.

Drilling Vessel
Recovers Rocks From Earth's Crust Far Below Seafloor Washington DC (SPX)
Apr 07, 2005
Scientists affiliated with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)
and seeking the elusive "Moho" - the boundary, which geologists
refer to as the Mohorovicic discontinuity, between Earth's brittle outer
crust and its hotter, softer mantle - have created the third deepest hole
ever drilled into the ocean bottom's crust.

Study Shows Early
Earth Atmosphere Hydrogen-Rich, Favorable To Life Boulder CO (SPX) Apr
08, 2005
A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy
probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising
finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began
on the planet.

Extreme
Climate Preserves Fossil Trove
Paleontologists have discovered that an extreme climate pattern may be responsible
for a rich trove of well-preserved Cretaceous period mammal, crocodile,
bird and dinosaur bones in northern Madagascar.

Climatologists
Discover Deep-Sea Secret Cardiff, UK (SPX) Apr 04, 2005
Climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres are linked by a
phenomenon by which the oceans react to changes on either side of the planet.

Picking On Einstein
Huntsville AL (SPX) Mar 29, 2005
This year marks the 100th anniversary of a revolution in our notions of
space and time. Before 1905, when Albert Einstein published his theory of
special relativity, most people believed that space and time were as Sir
Isaac Newton described them back in the 17th century.

LISA And The
Search For Elusive Gravity Waves Birmingham, UK (SPX) Apr 05, 2005
For almost 100 years, scientists have been searching for direct evidence
of the existence of gravity waves - faint ripples in the fabric of spacetime
predicted in Albert Einsteins theory of General Relativity.